Prevention is not rocket science, but it doesn't require the national takeover and complete bungling of our health insurance industry, dumping millions out of their current health plans, and driving up costs for vast numbers of people!

As you say in the article, "how can we as *individuals* invest in prevention? ...we can start by taking charge of our *own* health and becoming our *own* health advocates." This does not require a massive, complex and incompetent federal bureaucracy! It just requires a bit of responsibility and common sense.

If the government must have anything to do with it, the best solution for our skyrocketing health care *costs* that I've seen from government is HSAs paired with high-deductible insurance plans. I first encountered these in liberal California, and they make great sense because they take out the middle man (the insurance company) for the vast majority of non-critical health care transactions. You pay the doctor directly, so you have an incentive to keep the costs down. However, the money is there for you in your account and can be used only for health-related costs, so you have no excuse not to use it for preventive care. Coupled with common sense, this kind of plan has been very satisfactory to my family and many others, whether I was working for an employer or self-employed throughout the years. With the "ACA" these plans are being dialed back.

Well said. However the Affordable Care Act is working perfectly, exactly as planned. It just looks like as if it’s not working because the media in conjunction with the government is presenting Obamacare as something its not. Obamacare was never designed to provide less expensive insurance and or better coverage to Americans. Obamacare is large scale ‘insurance industry targeted’ corporate welfare. The goal; was to provide a system in which insurance companies could replace no-profitable/less profitable plans with more profitable plans via the following:

1) Require all persons of legal age to buy insurance. This alone should have set of red alerts across the board but it didn’t and that is quite possibly the saddest part to this Obamacare nightmare, that the majority are clueless to how forcing people to engage in commerce is unethical, and unconstitutional even if the corrupt legal system has said ‘Its OK because we are going to call it a tax’.
2) Erect a framework that requires coverage for services least likely to be used while raising deductibles and premiums. By providing services that are either less likely to be used or that will be used by only a small percent of the population the insurance company is able to reduce its annual pay outs while increasing its monthly/annual income.
3) Including in that framework language that allows the healthcare insurance industry to drop less profitable plans by requiring that all plans include services currently not found in most existing plans.
4) Engage with mainstream media and other entertainment providers in a campaign to paint Obamacare as something its not.

The Affordable Healthcare Act is quite possibly the largest handover of money and power from government to the private/corporate sector after TARP.